BHOPAL - Cities and towns across Madhya Pradesh will soon have more power outages as the gap between the demand and supply of electricity is widening, officials said.

“As of now, power cuts, which are officially for two hours daily in division headquarters, may be increased to three hours,” official sources said.

However, residents complain power cuts go on for hours at many of these places under the guise of maintenance or fault repairs.

“Power goes off for hours together almost daily but the electricity board employees would make you believe that it is not a power cut but is shut down for fault repairs,” a resident said.

The power generation in the state has been hit due to low water levels in reservoirs following last year’s scanty rainfall. Hydel power projectshave been affected, with the result that power crisis in the state has deepened with shortage crossing 1500 MW.

According to sources, the Madhya Pradesh State Electricity Board (MPSEB) is currently giving final touches to a new load-shedding plan to be forwarded to the state government for approval.

Under the new schedule, the divisional, district and sub-divisional headquarters, besides rural areas, are likely to witness power cuts for three, five, 12 and 14 hours daily respectively, the sources said.

Madhya Pradesh Energy Departments Additional Secretary R.B. Agrawal, however, refused to comment. “You will come to know soon. It may be in place in a day or two,” he said.

MPSEB’s move to prepare the load-shedding plan has come after Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan last week asked the energy department officials to go for scheduled power cuts instead of unscheduled ones.

Chouhan also directed the officials to chalk out a plant-wise action plan to increase Plant Load Factor (PLF) in the state and said that in addition to realizing the full installed power generation capacity, a time bound programme would soon be prepared to complete the under construction power plants.